Facebook Loneliness

Before this month of daily blogging, I hadn’t bothered to visit facebook in months, maybe a year. The last two weeks I’ve been reading everyone’s posts and wondering if I’ve missed something. It feels like my friends suddenly grew up and now everyone reads the news instead of taking photos of their food. Is this for real? Or is it an effect of facebook’s wacky algorithms? Or just election season? I can’t tell! But even though most of my friends are thoughtful and well-read people discussing important events, it somehow makes me feel more lonely than hermit-like disconnection.

Maybe it’s because facebook is loosely directed, as in everyone posts content targeting acquaintances. I feel like I’m missing something because I don’t understand enough context for why people post what they post, yet I feel entitled to context because I actually know these people. Unfair!

Perhaps social networks are a connectivity fallacy. Maybe the best connections lie on opposite ends of the acquainted-ness spectrum. For example, a meaningful book (or a good blog!!) assumes no context and supplies or invents it, while a friendly email plays with mutually understood context. Maybe the in-between of talking to people who sort of know you is the most impractical way to communicate.